With its Windows Mobile 6.5 [1] operating system on tap for later this year, Microsoft announced it will introduce Windows Mobile Widgets, promising developers easier and more efficient creation of applications with a look and feel more closely approximating web apps. "A good way to think of a Windows Mobile Widget is as a ‘portable chunk of the web' or just basically a rich Internet application," writes Microsoft software engineer Jorge Peraza on the Windows Mobile Team Blog. "Widgets are written using all the web technologies we know and love (HTML, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript) and, since they are powered under the covers by our new Internet browser, they have full access to flash and other ActiveX controls available on the device (like MediaPlayer)." According to Peraza, the Widgets platform will implement the latest draft of the emerging W3C standard for mobile widget applications and ensure support for transparent PNGs and Window.XMLHttpRequest object work.

For more on Windows Mobile Widgets:
- read this Windows Mobile Team Blog entry [2]

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First Windows Mobile 6.5 [4] devices expected in September